Shaving
by little librarian
Summary: The Doctor hissed in a breath as he nicked himself with the razor blade, and Rose giggled. "Nine hundred years old and you have this much trouble shaving your face?"


Rose closed the door of another previously unexplored room behind her with a soft _click_ and continued her way down the hall on her quest for an interesting room. As magnificent as the TARDIS was, it had a lot of rooms that just didn't hold her interest. She had found the garden a while back, and a swimming pool—which, for some reason, was in the library—, but not much after that. There were a few kitchens, and a lot of sparsely decorated sitting rooms. She wondered if there was an anti-gravity room anywhere.

Coming to the next door, she grasped the handle and opened the door with a bit of trepidation, like she had with all the others. Her head poked around the door, and she smiled at what she saw. She was looking in on a full bath, complete with the Doctor, leather jacket and all, standing in front of the mirror, sliding a razor over his cream-covered face. He hissed in a breath as he nicked himself, and then glared at the razor as if it had stolen his TARDIS before resuming his task. Rose, finding this funny, giggled aloud. The Doctor turned to look at her.

"You enjoying the show?" He raised his eyebrows at her. Rose only smiled.

She took his acknowledgement of her as an invitation and entered the bathroom, hopping up on the counter in front of him. "Nine hundred years old and you have this much trouble shaving your face?" She teased, looking at the little scratches on his cheeks. Some were covered with pieces of toilet paper, others were left without. The sight of the Doctor looking the way he did right then was so foreign to Rose that she launched into another fit of giggles.

"I've only shaved this face a few times! You try it!" His tone was so affronted that Rose laughed even harder.

"Alright then, give it here," she said, motioning towards the razor and choosing to ignore the face comment and focus on the unintended challenge at hand. She'd ask him about what he meant some other time.

He stared at her in disbelief for a moment. "If you must," he conceded, placing the razor in her waiting hand.

"Hold still," she warned. She reached out and grabbed hold of the bottom of his chin, guiding him to stand between her legs before beginning to slide the razor blade over his skin. After one stroke, she leaned back a bit to examine her work. "Mickey's better at this than you are, you know," she remarked.

"Oi!" The Doctor gave her a shocked look. After a second, he launched into a rant about human males and their general stupidity, especially when compared to him. Rose simply grabbed his jaw again, shutting him up long enough make a few more strokes. Every time she stopped for more than a few seconds, the Doctor would start right back up again with a new point against human males. Every time she forced him to stop, he would roll his eyes and huff out a breath. By the time she had finished, she had listened to at least half a dozen reasons why human males were definitely the lesser of the species. She couldn't really say she minded.

The Doctor smoothed his hand over his now-shaven face. "Never had someone else shave my own face," he mused.

Rose hopped off the counter and handed him the razor back. "Another reason why it's better with two." She grinned at him. "You can thank me by taking me somewhere new, unless you've got an anti-gravity room around here. We've been in the vortex for hours, and I'm dead bored." On impulse, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, then turned and walked out of the bathroom to wait for the Doctor in the console room, leaving a slightly stunned Time Lord in her wake.

A while later, after Satellite Five and Christmas at the Powell Estate, a new-but-same man stands in front the same mirror in the same bathroom. Cream is covering the parts of his face that are to be shaved, and he studies himself in the mirror intently, trying to figure out the best way to go about this. Just as it had before, the door opens and the same blond girl peeps around the corner. This time, though, she does not hesitate to enter the bathroom with a grin for the pinstriped man. She jumps up to sit on the counter, takes the razor from him, and guides the blade across the new contours of the same-but-different face as though nothing has changed. And, just as before, she does not leave before placing a kiss on his face. (And if her lips land a little closer to his than before, well, he's not going to complain.)


End file.
